Marketing

Until now, you had the option of showing your AdWords ads on the Search Network, Display Network or both. Google announced a new option called Search Network with Display Select.

The new Search Network with Display Select will allow to show your ads mostly on the Search Network AND some highly targeted pages in the Display Network. According to Google, customer who have tested this campaign type have seen their CTR increase by 35% and their CPA decrease by 35%.

In addition to extending the reach of search campaigns, this new campaign type offers better results on the display network than the old Search & Display Networks campaign type.

Search Network with Display Select uses improved signals and methods of predicting when and where your ads are likely to perform best, and sets a higher bar for when to show them. That means your ads are more likely to be shown to a smaller number of prospective customers, who are more likely to be interested in your offerings. Compared to the old campaign type, initial tests show that advertisers, on average, could see a 35% higher click-through-rate, and a 35% lower cost-per-customer purchase on the display portion of their Search Network with Display Select campaigns.*

This infographic comes from SaleCycle. It addresses the challenge of shopping cart abandonment.

Cart abandonment rates fell in Q3 2013 with 1.6% fewer shoppers leaving their purchase at the till compared with the previous quarter. Taken from a consolidation of statistics from 200 global brands, our Quarterly Infographic looks at all the key cart abandonment stats in Q3 2013:

Is the ranking of PLAs on Google search different to the ranking of products on Google shopping pages?

This question was answered by Kat, a Google employee:

In some circumstances, you may notice differences in how your products are serving or ranking on Google with PLAs versus Google Shopping. For example, you may see your items showing/ranking on the former but not showing/ranking on the latter. This behavior may happen, and could vary, based on several factors. Reasons why this may happen can include:

The available real estate is different between the two properties. On Google.com, there is less space to show PLAs while the Shopping property has more space.

The auction dynamics can be different between the two properties and, as such, the results may also be slightly different.

For some queries, Google Shopping may present results via a catalog (specific product page) instead of individual merchant listings while Google does not display these catalogs.

Improvements are continually being made to the system and, over time, these improvements can help further unify the results between the two properties but, on occasion, differences between results may be seen.

Google AdWords just updated Ad Rank, the algorithm that decided what position to show your ad. Previously, Ad Rank was calculated by using your max CPC bid and your Quality Score. With this update, Ad Rank will also take into account the expected impact from your ad extensions and formats.

Here are some notes from Google:

Ad extensions and formats can now influence the position of your ad on the search results page. If two competing ads have the same bid and quality, then the ad with the more positive expected impact from extensions will generally appear in a higher position than the other.

When estimating the expected impact of extensions and ad formats, we consider such factors as the relevance, clickthrough rates, and the prominence of the extensions or formats on the search results page.

Because Ad Rank is now more important in determining whether your ad is shown with extensions and formats, you might need to increase your Quality Score, bid, or both for extensions and formats to appear.

In each auction, we’ll generally show your highest performing and most useful combination of extensions and formats among those eligible. So there’s no need to try to guess which extensions will help improve your clickthrough rate the most.

You may see lower or higher average CPCs in your account. You may see lower CPCs if your extensions and formats are highly relevant, and we expect a large positive performance impact relative to other competitors in the auction. In other cases, you may see higher CPCs because of an improvement in ad position or increased competition from other ads with a high expected impact from formats.

For now, this update only affects search ads appearing on Google Search.

Ever since Google Shopping transitioned to a paid model, Google has been releasing new features constantly. Yesterday, they announced that a new campaign type will be rolled out called Shopping Campaigns.

The new campaign type will give you the ability to better manage your campaigns from a product and category level. Some of the new features are:

Shopping campaigns are currently available to a limited number of advertisers. It will be rolling out gradually in the US, with full global availability by early next year. API support will come in 2014 as well.

As we get closer to the holiday season crunch, the comparison shopping engines are getting ready to raise their prices. A few days ago NexTag lead the charge with their new tiered pricing and holiday pricing surcharge. Today, eBay Commerce Network (Shopping.com) sent out the following notice:

Dear Merchant,

With the holiday season approaching, we anticipate increased shopping activity across many categories. eBay Commerce Network will implement the following holiday pricing adjustment and temporarily adjust CPC rates only in select categories from November 1st to December 31st, 2013.

We will automatically adjust your CPC bids during the holiday pricing period; therefore no action is required on your part. On January 1st, 2014 we will readjust your bids to your pre-holiday amounts.

While some rates are increasing, most campaigns will not see a significant shift in cost of sale as we will continue to leverage Value-based-pricing, our network management tool, to sustain your ROI goals. This allows us to more prominently advertise your offers on the highest performing publishers to increase sales.

We recognize this is an exciting time of year for your business and we look forward to our continued partnership.

NexTag sent out a notification this weekend announcing a few changes to their pricing structure. Effective October 14th, 2013 the CPC rate will be based on the actual price of the item. See the tiered chart below for more information.

In addition, the annual holiday surcharge will go into effect at the same time. The holiday surcharge will be in effect from 12 AM Pacific on Monday October 14, 2013 through 11:59 PM Pacific on Sunday January 5, 2014.

Read the full email from NexTag below:

Dear Valued Merchant,

As the marketplace evolves, we continuously adjust our advertising approach to help maximize traffic to your site. As we enter into the busiest shopping time of the year, we wanted to inform you of two important changes to our pricing structure to help you optimize your traffic opportunity for this holiday and beyond.

Tiered pricing by category: To be more responsive to your needs, we’re introducing a tiered pricing model that helps align CPC pricing with merchant cost of sale. Essentially, you’ll pay less for clicks on lower-priced products and more for higher-priced products. This change will go into effect on October 14, 2013 and will continue unless the rate card is subsequently modified. The new tiered pricing is shown in our Rate Card.We believe this change will improve your overall COS for lower-priced products and ultimately allow you to list more products. With this change, we’ll be able to bid more for valuable traffic, and so will you.

Annual holiday surcharge: At the same time as our tiered pricing update, we will also rollout our holiday rates to help deliver expected traffic volume during the most critical time of year for traffic and sales. The surcharge for each category is shown in our Rate Card. The surcharge will be in effect from 12 AM Pacific on Monday October 14, 2013 through 11:59 PM Pacific on Sunday January 5, 2014.

You do not need to take any action for these changes to take effect. If you do not agree to the changes described above, you must suspend or terminate your account. Termination or suspension of your account will be effective two (2) business days after receipt by Nextag. Please contact your Account Manager or email our Seller Support team should you have any questions regarding these changes.

According to CPC Strategy, we remain the #1 independent comparison shopping platform for driving high volume and quality traffic. Wize Commerce is committed to helping merchants achieve significant volume of traffic and expected performance goals. We now offer a number of sites to maximize opportunity in the marketplace Nextag (with the widest selection of products) to Price Machine (for price-conscious shoppers) to Wize (with expert product recommendations) to ApplianceShopping (for specs-heavy product shopping).
We thank you for your business and look forward to a busy and productive holiday season!

Best wishes,
The Nextag team

Important Note: For products where you currently are bidding the minimum: All minimum bids on active products will automatically be adjusted up or down to the new minimum rates for the appropriate tier on October 14, 2013. Should you wish to bid above the new minimum rates for products where you currently bid the minimum, you will need to manually adjust your bids.

For products where you currently are bidding above the minimum: Bids that are above the current minimum but below the new minimum will be automatically adjusted to the new minimum bid for the appropriate tier. For price tiers where the new minimum CPCs are equal to or higher than the current minimum and your current bid is above the new minimum rate, your bid will not be changed. For price tiers where the new minimum CPCs are lower than the current minimum and your current non-minimum bid is above the new minimum rate, your bid will be automatically reduced to the new minimum CPC.

The holiday surcharge will also be automatically applied. The price tier changes described above will be applied first, and the holiday surcharge will be applied to the adjusted, price tiered bids. The surcharge applies to your total CPC, which includes standard CPC plus any CPC increases you have selected for the Logo or Marketing Message programs.

Becki Chester, CEO, Digicrab – a former journalist, Becki wrote for four national magazines before joining a leading digital marketing agency. She has extensive experience in managing SEO, PPC and social media campaigns.

Digital Marketing Services are an essential part of the expansion of all businesses in the current climate. However, of all digital marketing services, social media seems to be the most widely used, due in part to the huge amount of traffic that social networking sites receive, and the ease to which a social media can be used to promote a brand. But in order to maximise the effectiveness of such a strategy, you have to take a structured and conscious approach, otherwise your project will be lost in the tidal wave of other media on these platforms.

So here are my five general steps for a comprehensive social media strategy.

Step 1: Understand your customer

This is your first port-of-call. Who are the customers you want to interact with on social media? What do they like? Brainstorm around five ‘hot topics’ which your customers might be interested in, and remember to keep them in mind whilst constructing content: because with content marketing you promote your brand by sharing similar interests with your customer. These topics should come from an understanding of the psychographics, the influencing factors and the behaviour of the types of people you’re after. The more specific you are about this ‘marketing persona’, the easier it will be to construct content for them.

Step 2: Set a Goal

First of all: what’s the point? What are you hoping to achieve with this? Try and base your goal on the number of leads generated over a period of time, or a certain number of ‘shares’. Achievable and measurable goals are a must. Also, make sure you only have one area for your objective. Most digital marketing services plan to achieve one of the following aims:

Attracting new customers; This is probably the most common use of social media. Because of the sheer number of people on social networking platforms, one objective could be using your page to direct traffic to your company website.

Building your brand; Give your customers a reason to talk about your brand. Word-of-mouth advertising is the most sought after type of marketing, and is often difficult to achieve. If you have a product that could work well in a social media context, use that advantage and get your customers to begin having a conversation about your brand.

Engaging with your customers; By creating a dialogue with your customers, you have the potential to create loyalty. A repeat customer is the foundation of almost all successful companies, so if you want to make your brand one that is interactive, and bring people in that way, then social media is a useful tool.

Supporting sales; Similar to the above, supporting sales is about creating content that feeds into your products. If people have queries about your products, you can answer them on social media, by supplementing your products with other information.

Step 3: Put It into Practice

To put your ideas into practice, create an editorial calendar that works alongside your promotional calendar; planning content and thereby keywords based on promotional offers. By doing this, you make the next aspect much easier.

By creating content keywords, and a calendar, all you need is to assign an individual (or team, depending on the size of your digital marketing services) to keep the sites up-to-date. Now you’re up-and-running!

Step 4: Evaluate

This is a hugely important step. Once you’ve started, make sure you are well-versed in the huge variety of social media. Select your success metrics well, and keep an eye on them, as the instantaneous nature of social media marketing feedback is one of the major advantages of the format.

There are plenty of online monitoring tools, such as Klout or Edge Rank, that you can use. Google Alerts is also useful in this regard, as it can help keep you aware of your brand keywords, and what people are saying about your brand.

Step 5: Repeat!

With any marketing strategy, it is important to keep it up-to-date, and that you react to your market and how well previous strategies have gone. So, once you’ve evaluated the metrics that are available, go through the cycle again. Make sure you keep building on what you learn, reacting to fresh assessments by laying out new plans with new objectives.